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UK Gov. Wants IWF List To Cover 100% of UK Broadband
wild_quinine writes "The UK government stated in 2006 that they wished to see 100% of UK consumer broadband ISPs' connections covered by blocking, which includes images of child abuse. 95% of ISPs have complied, but children's charities are calling for firmer action by the government as the last 5% cite costs and concerns over the effectiveness of the system. According to Home Office Minister Alan Campbell, 'The government is currently looking at ways to progress the final 5%.' With a lack of transparency in the IWF list, firm government involvement, and blocking that only 'includes' (but may not be limited to) images of child abuse, it looks like the writing is on the wall for unfiltered, uncensored Internet connections in the UK."
I am all for enforcement of laws, when they are reasonable. But things like this stink of nanny state. Child abuse is horrible, we can all agree, but pretending like it doesn't exist is sad, and ineffective.
China's? or the UK's? Tell me, how in the world is your internet going to route around your ISP when they hit the kill switch?
*I'm only bitching because my response to the link was modded down
What?
Just another reason to use a proxy. The list is becoming quite long.
Sadly this is another knee jerk reaction to a serious problem in society. Just by making access to the images difficult, child abuse will not go away. The British government should look at the roots of anti-social behaviour in society and put in place programmes of education to ensure that the next generation are not abusers.
This kind of popluist resonse fomented by the gutter press has never been effective and never will.
The situation is bad, but it isn't quite as bad as this:
it looks like the writing is on the wall for unfiltered, uncensored Internet connections in the UK
They're only talking about broadband solutions marketed to consumers. Most ISPs offer "home office" broadband for just a few pounds per month more that isn't marketed to consumers, and hence would probably not fall under any legislation they may impose.
I agree the call for 100% is idiotic but I don't see it being a government forced initiative only that they'd like to see it.
The only people demanding 100% right now are the childrens charities, but I already knew they were the pinnacle of the "think of the children" croud hence why I'd never donate to them. In cases like this they ultimately do more harm than good because they simply just cover up the fact a problem still exists.
It's currently only the childrnes charities that are the problem here, the government, despite me hating them dearly for their repeated idiocy have not yet demanded 100% coverage, only said they'd like to see that. I'd like to see the existence of god disproved once and for all but that doesn't mean it's going to happen does it?
> meanwhile, they did it in Italy, and nobody said a thing.
Duh! They've already started blocking outgoing content which protests it!
I wish they wouldn't refer to it as child abuse. While sexually/mentally abusing children is child abuse, child abuse often times focuses on the physical abuse (at leaset in my area of the country in the US). That said, this law is probably targeted at filtering pornographic images of children who were abused. There (is?) should be a better term to describe what they're trying to filter.
That said, I don't think the governments of individual countries should censor the internet. By all means, censor public access, but as far as I am concerned, my connection to "the internet" is (or should be) a "private tunnel" that means no interference (from anyone, including the ISP!)
This "voluntary" and "recommended system" doesn't seem to be very voluntary all of a sudden. Why doesn't this surprise me?
...The ability to explore the garbage dumpster bazaar that is teh interpipes is a birth right!
Australia isn't too far behind...
Maybe I'm missing something here. I've always wondered why there was a rush to block images of child abuse like this. As long as these sites are up, there is still a possibility for authorities to identify the guilty parties through the websites.
If every ISP blocks 100%, then not even cops can get an unfiltered connection. That means that they have stopped trying to catch the child pornographers, they just want to pretend they don't exist.
These are real children being abused. Their abusers are handing the police evidence. Why the rush to ignore it? Why not just monitor them? Keep track of who visits www.kiddieporn.com or whatever.
Are they really serious about cutting out access to sites promoting or depicting child abuse? If so, I look forward to them blocking all sites which aid or abet or encourage the religious indoctrination of children. They're all malevolent, and far more prevalent than any other form of abuse.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Can let me know who the 5% that arent signed up are so I can transfer over to them? If i wanted censored internet, Id move to China.
Child pornography? That's a shit reason censor.
It also happens to be the one reason people aren't able to argue with.
Where did all these child abusers come from?
1. They were already there, the internet changed nothing.
2. They were created by the internet. They spawned from caves just like a MMORPG.
3. The internet magically turns people into child abusers just like that ActiveX control you didn't want.
4. The whole thing was blown out of proportion by the media creating a moral panic.
I've lived in several countries that have extensive censorship of all media, and that is the most scary thing on earth. It breeds a level of ignorance and double-think that just blows your mind. Censorship has the power to destroy your nation, however powerful it is today.
Watch this space. As America and the UK among others become enemies of the internet, strangled by copyright laws run amok, and kids banned from playing with their chemistry sets, other countries will usurp us all.
Hadrians Firewall?
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Instead of just placing the offending site in a block list, why not go after the site, shut it down and prosecute the owners.
When they came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
The crucial difference here is that nobody will admit to viewing kiddy pr0n, but the government has already set its sights on extreme and violent porn [although to be fair to the IWF, they apparently want nothing to do filtering this].
Child abuse is a terrible thing
Saddling them with 2 trillion pounds of debt thanks to the adults greed is not.
pension prospects ? thing of the past.
job for life ? thing of the past.
IANA trained psychologist but, it seems to me that the whole idea of making the viewing/downloading of CP illegal, will only have the opposite effect of whats intended (assuming whats intended is a reduction of child sex abuse), because pedophiles dont decide what they are attracted to anymore than anyone else.. Considering the stigma attached to even the suggestion of being a pedophile, I think its quite reasonable to assume that given the choice, a pedophile wouldnt be one if they could help it. Given that, I would much rather they got their kicks jerking off to CP, than taking it out on a child because they have no other avenue.
Sex is a very powerful motivator for anyone (just look at the advertising industry for proof of that) and to assume that someone will just control their urges for the rest of their lives without any way to 'release' (for want of a better word) them seems very dangerous and ignorant of human (and animal) behaviour. I dont know what the solution is to child sex abuse, except maybe compulsory therapy for abusers as well as the abused (although, by then the damage is already done), but Im pretty sure this isnt it.
Does this mean that Tor hidden nodes and I2P will finally gain some traction?
Some ISPs will never comply. Super Awesome for the win!
http://superawesomebroadband.com/
I'll get me coat
Super Awesome Broadband
My position is that, given that we're not going to be able to avoid the basic problem, legislation is actually not necessarily a bad thing. It would plave the IWF on a legislative footing, which would alter the governance and the contestability in potentially a good way. But people I have immense respect who know a lot more about this stuff disagree, and think the upside (judicial oversight) would not be worth the downside (ministers making positions).
Sadly, it seems that a huge part of the e-crime agenda is being devoted to child porn, which is only one past of the issue and one where the end users aren't the victims. Fraud and other issues are being subsumed.
I would support the measure for blocking "child porn" (although I wouldn't ever call it porn), we all know that governments would NOT stop at just one thing, they will find something else objectionable, as the UK government already has. And so it will go on and on, until eventually, they will get to ban something that the rest of the idiots that use the internet ARE bothered about. Then it will be too late, and all the population will have is the state broadcaster pushing out government propaganda and lies (what the BBC does for the current government). Besides which, the IWF are a private body getting taxpayers money, accountable to nobody. Who trusts them, I don't.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I don't quite follow why everyone is against putting in legislation. I'm not saying I am, i just don't quite follow what the issue is....
So they try and block all child porn - job well done, no?
Yes it doesn't stop the underlying porn existing, but if no one can get at it, then that will filter through to less people making it, no?
I'm just confused as to what all the uproar is about? (as in an honest question - not trying to take a stupid position...)
To those that are in power that you can be made to believe what you are being told.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
By blocking any sites which provide competing views, the propaganda becomes the accepted truth.
If you depend on Google for your searches, you don't have access to the whole internet
In fact, it's likely to make the problem worse, since we're now blocking decent people from seeing what's really going on, and figuring out why.
As soon as you use those words, you have lost your argument in the eyes of the general public. Studies have shown that most illegal images of children do not involve sexual abuse. Data from Garda (linked above) shows that the most serious image possessed in 44% of "child pornography" cases in Ireland (whose child pornography laws mirror those of the UK) decpited no sexual activity whatsoever.
Pictures of naked children, which presumably comprise the majority of blocked images, should not be called "child abuse images". That term is just newspeak designed to justify the vast powers of censorship and funding which are handed to the IWF.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Seems they maintain a list, http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.148.438.htm of those being supplied with the block data.
Ad Astra!
How does the cleanfeed system handle peer to peer? Because usenet, email, gnutella are all peer to peer. All it would take is for someone to implement a peer to peer static caching system for web sites and build it into an add-on or module for firefox.
Deleted
What I want to know is... which ISPs are holding out? There should be a whitelist for the ISPs that take a stand on this stuff.
I take my hat off to the UK Gov. for completely missing the point by several thousand miles.
Yes, images of child abuse (and a hell of a lot of other images on the net) are nasty.
But hiding them from public view is pointless ... did they learn nothing from 1930's prohibition in terms of the effectiveness of "banning something". All they will succeed in doing is pushing the problem underground, while at the same time telling the general populace "look at what a good job we are doing".
In the mean time, a new culture of underground sharing of these kinds of images will emerge, "nasty pics" will become the new drug of the masses, and the only ones to profit will be the sick bastards who create and distribute the stuff in the first place. Because everyone knows that the demand for illicit material always comes with a higher price tag. What a wonderful way to encourage entrepreneurship.
In terms of how the ISPs will actually implement this, I wonder what tech they are using ? Grepping the filenames for keywords ? Yes, very effective, because everyone knows that these have filenames like "sick_kiddy_porn1.jpg" <sarcasm>
Is this limited to JPG, GIF and PNG ? Then the pushers will simply wrap them in ZIP or RAR archives, password protected, and no one will be any the wiser right ?
Or I wonder if this is the new "job creation" scheme that Gordon Brown was talking about ? Employing 1000's of do-gooders to manually flag offensive images and add them into a database somewhere of blacklisted items ?
I'm not condoning this kind of crap, but trying to "hide" it from the public is NOT the way to do it. Have we come to such a point where investigative and law enforcement agencys are so hopeless, that we will no longer investigate crime, simply try to hide as much of it from the public view, so the stats look better ?
"it's more "Any kind of filtering is bad"
thin end of the wedge type of thing. First it's Child porn, once that's gone we'll move on to the next most horrific thing, until eventually all we have left are things we don't consider bad at the moment."
Actually, they're already starting to use child pornography as a wedge tactic for wider censorship of the internet. A research paper for the Coroners and Justice Bill mentioned that a clause criminalising foreign ISPs who violate UK virtual child porn laws "could potentially provide a test bed for the future development of wider internet regulation."
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
IWF are the same group of self appointed censors whos system is so badly flawed that they included Wikipedia and threatened Amazon with black listing and were forced to back down after they it was discovered the image was an Album cover sold legal in the UK for years.
Wouldn't the networks that don't block this stuff attract the most customers interested in that trade? So isn't leaving 5% of the ISP's without filters creating a target area for police to more actively search since those networks should have a larger concentration of people into that stuff?
Orwell's here and now and he's living large!
happen.
Fact is no matter how well intentioned an idea, if it can be abused someone will inevitably abuse it. The internet is like the world. There are certain areas you stay away from, or teach your kids to stay away from. This wouldn't be a problem if parents would stop pointing fingers and started taking responsibility.
To me it's the same as some trespasser injuring themselves on my property. In the US I can be liable which is RETARDED. This is all part of taking responsibility away from those should bear it and treating us like children. Luckily I live in the United States where revolts happen daily and slowly and eventually good wins out. Albeit... it takes a long time sometimes...
Americans got fat and happy and now that the bubble has burst reality is starting to set in. People are focusing on the world again as shown by the recent election.
However, I digress... as far as that filter is concerned... uh... it's not going to do shit to those who ACTUALLY want to get to it. They use proxy's in other countries...
Guess what your filter just got bypassed and it did about as much good as the USA's border fence down south. It only moved where people cross. How many tunnels have they found now?
Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop what you are doing. You and others.
Every time you or anyone else adds pandering disclaimers like this you are undermining your own argument and are undeniably contributing to the problem of censorship in our society.
Why do you think the "Think of the Children" brigade have gotten so far? How do you think that these people have been so successful at slowly introducing censorship to the Internet, and into society in general? It is because they rely on fear and intimidation to produce capitulations such as your disclaimer. Without fear, they are powerless in the face of common sense.
No reasonable person need declare their revulsion. Yet everyone does so, because they are afraid of a pointing finger. Our society has been intimidated into censorship, and no one dares speak against it.
Your statement even went so far as to seek greater consensus "we can all agree", adding to the cycle of intimidation and fear. This is where giving in has gotten us, and there is no end in sight to the injustices that will be heaped on us all "In The Name Of The Children". No end. These people will not stop, ever.
Please do not capitulate in this way. There is no need to, despite how fearful you may be.
May the Maths Be with you!
http://www.thatsfuckingstupid.com/index.php/2009/02/iwf-fail/
Be nice, sponsor me: http://jailbreak.ragabonds.org.uk
Why does this sound so familiar?
Oh, wait, yeah.
Here in Finland we have DNS-blocking of whole domains by "voluntary" ISPs for the use of blocking child pornography.
( Voluntary in the sense that the actual argument goes, if they won't participate we'll make it mandatory. )
A) This just hides the problem from people's minds without doing anything to prevent the actual child abuse from happening. It also takes resources away from this work.
B) The time to go around the block is the time it takes to type (for example) OpenDNS DNS numbers.
C) The list is secret so there's no way of knowing what is being blocked...
D) ...Unless of course you do a comparison of blocked DNS listing to a one not blocked. Essentially the police is just posting a list where to find the stuff.
E) Mistakes happen and stuff ends up on the list that should not be there. We are supposed to trust that this happens really seldom and is corrected.
F) We already had laws that covered everything needed to prosecute people guilty of child abuse. There was no need for this.
G) As an added bonus the law violates the Finnish Constitution.
H) As was predicted, there has been suggestions of blocking net poker sites, sites that violate copyright...
So, UK, welcome to the club. My English is much better than my Chinese.
what good is this form of censorship anyway?
Wouldnt those sharing heavily encrypt their files? I can not believe there are child porn sites out there that openly share such documents ?!
Totally pussy-whipped. Good, honest, non-perverted men can't even walk down the street without fear of being called a molester. And now if you use that 5%'s services, its obviously because you are a molester. Its getting to be destructive, of path of good intentions all considered.
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
Indeed - the recent Wikipedia / Virgin Killer example shows that their definition is not just about abuse. Another example would be to note that the law now covers images up to 18, even though the age of consent is 16, so anything above that is entirely legal to do.
The IWF like to talk about "child abuse images", but their actual list covers anything which is potentially an "indecent" image of somebody under 18.
I'm particularly displeased at the BBC's bias on this article - they reproduce the spin that this is just about images of child abuse, and don't give any opposing point of view (apart from a brief statement from Zen Internet - good on them). No mention of the issues with Wikipedia (it only appears in "See also", which is presumably an automated list).
They also mention the NSPCC and the Children's Charities Coalition on Internet Safety, implying that two organisations are lobbying for this - but the NSPCC are in fact a member of the latter group!
You can complain about bias: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
"Arresting producers of child porn would actually be effective in reducing the incidences of child abuse in the world, while avoiding the whole nanny state big brother blocking of the tubes of the internet going on now."
War on prostitution,
enforcement against the hookers- activity continues
enforcement against the johns- activity continues
war on drugs
enforcement against producers-activity continues
enforcement against distributors-activity continues
enforcement against retail level sales people-activity continues
you really think you can succeed in the CP war by going after one side or the other? or even both at the same time? reprehensible or not- it's a human vice that will apparently always have its adherents.
I doubt an absolute "stopping the flow of CP" will ever be possible, unless you want to reduce the community size to one village.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The recent Wikipedia fiasco suggests that anyone can see a blocked image just by accessing the image's URL directly, as it seems their blocking system is incapable of blocking images.
However, if they've randomly blocked a page with legal text as they like to do, you're out of luck.
International Wildlife Foundation? Is it that hard to give the acronym meaning in the summary? Don't say RTFA, how do I know if I want to RTFA if I don't know what TFA (the freaking acronym) means in the first place. Do we have editors here, or just post monkeys? And no I'm not new here.
...there's something strange about the ground. Oh, the government's made it slope.
But there's more. Something about the texture of it... what is it? Can't quite put my finger on it.
Oh wait, no, I got it - it's slippery
We're all fscked!
Quick, photograph a policeman and get yourself arrested now that THAT'S illegal too - it's the only way out of this Orwellian nightmare for us proles
So, how many shell companies outside the UK are going to be offering deals on a pre-setup tunneling service soon? Cryptoed of course.
Which will lead to the UK needing to outlaw tunnels, and cryptography, and blah blah blah. Ahhh, good times, good times.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The Home Office and a coalition of children's charities are seeking to block access to the Internet to save the populace from child pornography and Internet-borne cancers.
"Only 95% of Internet users are protected from computer-borne paedophile cancers," said Home Office Minister Alan Campbell. "We must bring the other 5% into line, despite their spurious claims of the fine British-designed Cleanfeed system being 'completely incompetent broken crap that never worked in the first place.' It is clear that blocking all potentially illegal images is as easy as stopping people from sharing movies and music, which is a solved problem."
Zoe fucking Hilton of the NSPCfuckingC concurred. "We need decisive action from the government to ensure our continued income. If you're an ISP who doesn't sign up with the IWF, you're a fucking paedo. Paedo. Paedo. Paeeee-do. And you cause cancer, you fucking arsehole. And give us your fucking money, now. Paedo. I hope they fuck and kill you in jail."
"The IWF has protected ISPs from government interference for over a decade and users from potentially illegal images," said potentially fabulous drag queen and IWF head Peter Robbins. "Although our recent foray into actually attempting to do the impossible rather than just existing as something for ISPs to point at hasn't gone so well, we must protect children from carcinogenic Olympic logos of Lisa Simpson being forced into sexual acts. Think of the cartoon characters!"
The Government has signalled it will block the "streaming" loophole by making it illegal not merely to download such images, but to think about them or consider their possible existence.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The UK government stated in 2006 that they wished to see 100% of UK consumer broadband ISPs' connections covered by blocking, which includes images of child abuse.
"See no evil"?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Why do the charities want censorship, when the far better option would be to alert Interpol to users finding it and to monitor them so they can shut down the source. Blocking it just means the criminals will know it is blocked and go underground, better to secretly monitor them I think.
People are talking about how stupid and ineffective this sort of censorship legislation is, and that is so true - it IS ineffective for what the government says they want to do it for - but I don't think they really even give a fuck about that - what it WILL be INCREDIBLY effective for is enabling this increasingly authoritarian government's control over the internet - it will put in place a framework by which they will be able to censor the internet.
This is coming to every western country I'm afraid, and it will never be called what it is - it will only be introduced and supported as a way to "protect the children" or "stop terrorism," but in essence the real goal is to put a choke hold on what governments consider extremely dangerous to their interests: The free flow of information in real-time and the ability for anyone to organize and communicate instantly in so many different ways.
A few years ago my wife and I bought a chata (weekend house) in Slovakia, intending it for holidays, weekends away, that sort of thing.
As time passes I am more and more thinking in terms of simply moving there for good. Strange world, where you feel more free in a former Communist-block country than you do in a the UK.
Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I cant reply to this post iv been blocked.
Surely, if this filter can find child abuse images so easily, then the authorities can investigate, remove the images and arrest the people involved...then the filter can be turned off?
All that blocking it does is...well...nothing at all. The images and the perpetrators are still around, and no children have been protected.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
Surely the filtering performed by IWF/ISP could be easily circumvented by using one of the many available and free web proxies?
Or am I missing something?
James
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk